Category Archives: Goals 2013

It’s just absolute second nature to me, failing… I fail at everything and usually it’s in the most epic way possible. I can’t just complete a freaking goal. Seriously, how hard is it to blog every single day? Not that hard, especially when I’ve had so freaking much to write about. But, this is the first time in at least 5 days that I’ve even gotten on the computer…

The funk that I had been talking about a few days ago, not only got worse but lasted for a long time. Even at this point, I’m not sure I’m out of it or if this is just a little break it’s allowing me to take. I haven’t felt this agitated, depressed, overwhelmed, and just generally upset in a really long time. Today, thank goodness, is being a decent day and I haven’t been boggled down by nothing but negative thoughts but it’s the first day in almost a week that I’ve felt this good.

For the most part, this last week really sucked.

First, I lost all love of blogging literally overnight. I even sat down with The Boyfriend and had a serious discussion with him about not blogging anymore… I’m not sure what sparked this feeling that I’m done with it and I still haven’t even made a decision one way or another. I just sometimes feel like I waste so much of my time on blogging (on all my blogs) and for no real purpose. I’m just losing all my blogging hope. Hope for what, I don’t know, but I’m losing it… And I can’t believe how seriously I’ve considered stopping, because if I don’t have blogging, what do I have?!?

Then, the week continued to get worse as I felt more and more bad about thinking about quitting blogging. My Mom had come over after I had had a stressful couple of days and was just feeling generally down and out. As we’re talking on my bed, a lady comes up to my door. Turns out, yet again, someone called Child Services on us – this time, we apparently had no food. I invited her into the house and was all proud because our cupboards were filled with food, so there was no merit to this report that they had gotten. But because of our previous issue with them, she’s decided to keep our case opened…

Our house was relatively clean and what wasn’t cleaned, got that way before she came over again. I figured it would be as simple as showing her that we could get the little bit of mess that was here cleaned up and she would close our case and everything would be fine. But no… Instead, she thinks that both The Boyfriend and I need some additional parenting help, so until we start getting that, our case is staying open.

I wish that I didn’t have to keep proving myself over and over again as a perfectly capable parent. Yes, my house gets dirtier than it should and that’s something that I am sincerely working on. Other than that, there is nothing anyone can say about me that puts me into the bad parent category that continually needs to be monitored by a government agency. They’ve interviewed the kids multiple times now and each time results in the same thing, the kids saying that they are happy in the situation they have and that they wouldn’t change it for the world… They’ve now interviewed me multiple times and The Boyfriend twice and they know we are aware of the problems we do have, we are taking steps to deal with the problems we do have and we’re willing to do even more. I’m not sure what more we could possibly do to prove that we’re not shit parents.

And I’m absolutely tired of people who have never even set foot into my house, calling about things they have no idea about. We don’t even know who called on us this time, which just drives me even more up the wall. It was most definitely someone who has never been in my house, that’s all I know for sure. It makes parenting so much harder though when you aren’t even given the chance to be confident in what you are doing, but instead are constantly wondering when the next time someone is going to file a false report about you. I just hate that I work my ass off day in and day out to provide my kids with the things they need, to give myself to them and be there for them, when I’m exhausting myself stressing out about them, and none of it seems to make even a fraction of a difference. I know it sounds cliche, but it’s comforting, haters gonna hate…

After the lady left, both the first and second visits, I was beyond ready to throw in the towel. I kept saying over and over again that if the government really thought I was just that terrible of a parent, they should just take the kids or that I should just send them to live with Alfie and let him deal with constantly having every aspect of his parenting shoved down his throat as an improvement he needs to make. Obviously, these are only thoughts and not actually something I would do. I couldn’t stand having my kids taken from me, even by their own dad…

Then, my brother was in the hospital for a couple days and we were all excited about any progress he might be able to make. They put him back on the same old meds that he was on last time, at a super-low-dose and then sent him home. For a day or two, he seemed alright. A little bit crazy here and there, but nothing that wasn’t manageable. Then, out of nowhere, he’s right back to absolute crazy even while he’s still on the meds. So, we’ve been dealing with him whenever the house that he’s living out no longer feels “safe” to him. It’s stressing everyone out and we all seem bitchy because of it.

It’s just been a whirlwind week of crap and I don’t even think I’ve opened the whole can left. It’s like when you open a can of corn and you’re shaking it all out but there’s still a huge clump of kernels not letting go. I haven’t even delved into that clump. That’s how I feel… It sure makes a person want to sleep a whole heck of a lot!

Alright, so I officially suck at blogging everyday, it’s just impossible. And yesterday, there were so many opportunities and I just could not force myself to write anything. I had absolutely no motivation. This is something I’m going to be exploring with a passion over the next few days, because I can’t keep doing this to myself. I can’t keep letting every single goal I ever make for myself slip through my fingers, especially when it’s something I enjoy doing…

Plus, I’m never going to get anywhere that I want to be if I just continue to get discouraged or whatever you want to call it. I am in one heck of a funk though. This thing has got a vicious grip on me and all day yesterday and all day today, I have just felt completely boggled down by whatever this negative emotion is that I’m feeling at the moment. It’s not even really any particular feeling, just a general blah-ness.

I’m not sure exactly what’s causing this. I know part of today’s funk has to do with the fact that it was supposed to be The Boyfriend’s day off and then he ended up getting called into work bright and early this morning because night crew didn’t do their jobs. I would’ve been less upset about it if it weren’t for the fact that they had been dicking him around in general over this day off for the last two weeks, constantly changing when it would be and constantly changing how many days it would be, that it was annoying that they had finally gotten it figured out and then I get woken up this morning to a phone call for him to come in on his day off. I was not impressed…

But the day, for the most part, has been overall decent. Yes, there’s been moments of getting angered with the kids or moments of laughter, such as – we downloaded a whole bunch of game demos because The Boyfriend got a hard drive. One of the games we downloaded was Just Dance 4 for the kids and it was just about the cutest thing watching Kenzie and Kaeidyn try to nail these dance moves. It’s been a day like any other basically.

I hate that school is already starting again. I definitely don’t feel prepared at all. I was hoping to go to the laundromat before school started, I was planning on having so much more of the house completely cleaned. We’ve had each area of the house completely cleaned at one point or another, but keeping it that way seems physically impossible. And that’s only because my energy levels are at an absolute minimum – or else it wouldn’t be that impossible.

And that’s another thing that I really need to figure out. How to get my energy levels up, because I just feel exhausted and un-motivated all the time. I don’t want to do anything or go anywhere or move. I just want to stay in one spot… I feel incredibly lazy and I hate it. I mean, obviously I’m not just staying in one spot or not doing anything, because that’s definitely impossible, but I’m not doing all that I want to be doing.

Darn this winter thing. I swear, if it were summer, I would not be going through all these whiny days and nothing but complaints. I hate this weather and I hate the lack of sunshine and I hate that I can’t kick the kids outside to play… I’m just pissy…

I’m not sure how much I’ve actually told you about this challenge that I’m doing – and at the moment, I’m the only one doing it but that’s okay, I’ll make it work. So tonight, not only am I going to tell you more about the challenge, but I’m also going to use TODAY’S INSPIRATION to write my own post. I’ve been semi-working on this list for month’s, but have been being an incredibly annoying perfectionist about it, so today, I’m throwing that out…

I’m not going to go into great detail about The Blog Everyday Challenge, because I’ve written about it pretty much everywhere you could imagine and because it’s title is pretty self-explanatory. You blog, every single day, for however long you want to set your goal to blog for is – could be days, weeks, months and even years. Our mission is to support you on that journey!

By joining our official group on Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous, you’ll get support and encouragement to keep you blogging everyday and you’ll also get to meet up with some great adult bloggers. But even if you’re not an adult blogger and still want to join in, we’ve got you covered.

There are even brand new products in the Blog-A-Holic Designs shop so that you can motivate yourself to keep blogging when the going gets tough and even products that you can customize to promote your blog (and the fact that you’re doing this challenge). I’ve been posting about that everywhere too, so I’m not going to say anymore about that…

So, that brings me to my very first goal. I really want to blog every single day for an entire year. So, my plan is to blog daily right here on The Rantings, and while I can’t guarantee what the ratio of adult posts to non-adult posts will be, I’m hoping that it will generally stick around even.

Some of my many other blogging-related/online/technology-type goals this year include:

Add new products to Blog-A-Holic Designs at least once a week, which includes promoting said products on Tumblr blog

Actually start going through my drafts (on all the blogs…) and start finishing and publishing the pieces

Learn how to create an application for devices – just because I want to!

Step up my social networking game… This one requires quite a bit, but a couple of things that I vow to absolutely do this year:

Post every day to my personal Facebook page. It already streams my blog posts there and it shows stuff from the Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous Tumblr blog twice a day, but I’d really like to start putting my own posts up there. Ideally, I’d use Facebook notes to kind of do a daily update about all the stuff I got done online that day… Here’s hoping!

Post every day to Twitter, at least once a day, because I’m really bad for forgetting all about Twitter

Start posting and using my YouTube accounts, both my personal and Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous one. One day, the LBA one will include uploaded videos, but at this point, I just don’t have time to focus on it. It’s something that is in the very early planning phases…

Figure out the one and only system that I’m going to use to curate content (ie. Digg, Delicious, Diigo, Bit.ly), because right now I seem to use a whole bunch of different things and it’s just not working out to my advantage at all…

I know that more will come to me the more I think about it, but I think this is looking like a pretty hefty list already. I guess another goal we can add to this, is to upgrade Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous. I had planned to do this before the New Year, but life kept getting in the way of that goal, so I don’t want to make any promises… But I really want to allow people video uploading and a video chat room (personally, I really want the chatroom, my members apparently want the video uploading).

So now, what are your blogging goals for 2013? Do you typically set goals for your blog, or is this your first time?

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